Software Support

[Fuat C. Baran]

In article <8904241508.AA03362 at delphi.bsd.uchicago.edu> dbabsd at delphi.bsd.uchicago.edu (DBA - bsd) writes:
>Well, chris, yes.  In fact, our average response time from sun software
>support is probably in the 7 day range.  I have a call outstanding now
>that's over two weeks old (customer reference # 291192 for those of you at
>sun who might say: "oh, that's impossible"...look it up).

Yes, occasionally email response time is very poor.  In general we have
one week turnaround from the hotline, though the worst case was over a
month.  At the other extreme I once had a response in under 48 hours,
twice (they generated two SO numbers, and I got two responses...  :-)).

>frankly, sun software support is so bad that it's almost worse than not
>having any support at all (except you need those patches for the buggy
>OS).  it nearly useless to get return calls a week later.  what's most
>irritating is that we PAID for 2-4 hour turn around (please don't laugh,
>as i'm sure sun does all the way to the bank, it really is in the
>contract).  but, i guess sun doesn't honor contracts...(?).  come on,
sun, >either give those of us who PAID for our support the support you
promised >or give us some kind of rebate.

I once complained to our Customer Service Adminstrator about poor response
time given that we had a 4 hr response (24hr/weekday) contract, and was
told that the 4hr response really only applied to the hardware.  For
example, a hardware problem called in at 3 am will get a response by 7 am
(and an SO number at the time the call was placed), while a software
problem called in at 3 am will get logged at 9am (i.e no SO number
available till "the office opens in the morning") and response by 1pm.
Yes this sounds pertty bogus, and the person I spoke with acknowledged
that, but said that someone at the support center would have to change the
established policy.

Note that this applied to calls phoned in to the support center.  Email
querries seem to take 2-7 days to get a canned response with the SO
number, followed by a few more days for a real response.

>as a side note, i should mention that hardware support is fine and we are
>very pleased with our sun hardware.  we just think that the software
>support is a joke.

Yes, so far our hardware support has been excellent.  Calls are logged
through the support center, but it is the local New York office that
actually deals with us, and we are very happy with them.


						--Fuat

INTERNET: fuat at columbia.edu          U.S. MAIL: Columbia University
BITNET:   fuat at cunixc.cc.columbia.edu           Center for Computing Activities
USENET:   ...!rutgers!columbia!cunixc!fuat      712 Watson Labs, 612 W115th St.
PHONE:    (212) 854-5128                        New York, NY 10025